My Lai Massacre

These are the headlines we are tracking for you in this episode of On the News Line:

My Lai Massacre

March 16th 1968 is a sad day in the history of modern Vietnam. Back then, a group of US soldiers were sent to crackdown on Vietcong fighters in My Lai and a neighboring community. Instead of armed men, they met a group of unarmed civilians, mostly women and civilians. And then came the tragedy: In three to four hours, the US soldiers killed 504 unarmed civilians. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. The incident was described as the “most shocking episode in Vietnam war”. According to later testimonies, the soldiers were ordered to destroy everything in the village that was “walking, crawling or growing”. The incident sparked an international outcry and increased opposition to the US involvement in the war.

White House firings
Hot on the heels of the US president sacking his once popular top diplomat Rex Tillerson, reports coming out of the White House say Donald Trump is planning to fire another key official: National Security advisor H.R. McMaster. The reports also say Trump is ok with removing McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is taking his time as he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up. What is clear is Trump could pay a price for the firings as would be successors to sacked officials may decline to come forward. The reason: they could think that they might also end up humiliated at the end of the day.